By Michael Eboh

A coalition of Civil Society Organisations, under the aegis of Centre for Social Justice, CSJ, in conjunction with the United States Agency for International Development, USAID and International Foundation for Electoral Systems, IFES, have raised an alarm over the threat posed to the growth of the Nigerian economy by the huge spending by political parties in the build up to the elections.

According to a report titled, ‘Second campaign finance and use of state administrative resources report in the 2015 presidential election,’ Mr. Eze Onyekpere, Lead Director, CSJ, said the increasing expenditure pattern of the parties will impact the Nigerian economy negatively.

He said, “Although declining oil prices contributed to Nigeria’s deteriorating macroeconomic fundamentals, the coincidence of campaign spending and the acceleration of the deterioration brings to the fore the inextricable link between election spending and the health of the economy.

“With the attention shifted from governance and a lot of expenditure on campaigns, the state of the economy in terms of depreciating exchange rate, inflation and reduced economic growth were bound to occur.”

The report put the total amount spent so far by the two major political parties — People Democratic party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC)and their supporters in advertisements in the print medium at N1.382 billion.

Specifically, Onyekpere said, “The total up to February 14, 2015 for the APC presidential candidate is N332.583 million, while the total up to February 14, 2015 for the PDP presidential candidate is N1.049 billion.”

The report further listed other expenses as: campaign rallies — N1.057 billion for PDP and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, N595.082 million for APC and Muhammed Buhari; Bill boards — N155.13 million for PDP and N99.23 million for APC.

Electronic media campaign coverage for the presidential candidates were put at N508.35 million for the PDP, N391.05 million for the APC, while electronic media adverts were put at N7.339 million and N5.556 million for the PDP and PDP respectively, bringing the total to N2.5 billion and N1.091 billion for the PDP and the APC respectively.

In general, the report aggregated the summary of all presidential campaign expenses at N4.973 billion, broken down as PDP — N3.549 billion; APC — N1.424 billion.

Onyekpere, however, recommended that, “All persons, associations and organisations who have sought to induce voters with money and materials should be prosecuted in accordance with Section 124 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended).